4 ways how customer experience management can help your business

Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM), as a discipline, works towards using data analytics to improve the customer service experience. It is a high-tech outgrowth of traditional customer service that uses gauging and responding to customer satisfaction with more personalized interactions designed to increase the customer’s loyalty and satisfaction.

Although most businesses can see the advantages of personalizing customer service – and the glut of online business and personal information available on any consumer is staggering – CEM attempts to make customer satisfaction the focus of all interactions.

CEM vs traditional advertising

The main difference between traditional customer service and CEM is expanding the customer service role to encompass all interactions with the customer, no matter how insignificant they may appear. By creating a customer focused experience, instead of a sale, CEM is creating an advocate out of a customer.

Combining that advocacy with expanded Social Media Marketing (SMM) companies can create an effective, yet inexpensive, advertising campaign that uses customers as its spokespeople. Make no mistake, CEM – although focused on customer satisfaction – is about creating a strong customer base that will actively support and advocate your products.

How can CEM help you?

There are several obvious advantages to adopting CEM for your company. Creating a dedicated customer experience team will take time and money, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages:

Increased customer support. With its emphasis on quality customer interaction, CEM will shift your business’s focus to a customer-centric model.

Increased customer loyalty. By turning customers into supporters, your business will benefit from word of mouth advertising and the creation of brand advocates.

Reduced costs. Focusing on the customer aspect of business can reduce costs in advertising and support. The creation of a stable and growing base of followers who also advertise your company through social media and personal life can allow you to shift money marked for advertising into customer support.

Practical matters

Adopting a CEM based approach to your business is not difficult. Much of the infrastructure will already exist and the most challenging aspect is to create a company-wide CEM standard that will be followed for each customer, every time. Consistency is a hallmark of good customer experience management.

The initial step is to find out what your customers want. Using data analytics, surveys and feedback will get you a lot of information. Much of which will be superfluous for your purposes. Gathering and consolidating data will help you understand the specific expectations your customers have of your company.

Once that information is gathered, it must be personalized and disseminated through your company. You want to create a friendly and personalized experience for each customer based on what they expect while meeting company-wide standards.

A standardized, but personalized, level of service can be difficult for companies to reach on their own. As business becomes more complex, it is harder for everyone to be an expert in every facet. Customer experience management has grown from the simple idea of giving the customer what they want to a complete discipline governing the way a business is run.

Ironically, finding and vetting a CEM expert, consultant or company can give you your first real look at how customer experience management can work for you.

The right choice can lead to boost revenue with sales increase from existing customers and new sales from their recommendations. You’ll improve customer loyalty significantly through adequate customer interactions.